Methane is the major constituent of natural gas and also of biogas. World reserves of natural gas are constantly being upgraded and more natural gas is currently being discovered than oil. Because of the problems associated with transportation of a very large volumes of natural gas, most of the natural gas produced along with oil, particularly, at remote places, is flared and hence wasted. The conversion of alkanes contained in the natural gas directly to higher hydrocarbons and aromatics is extremely difficult. If technologies are made available for the conversion of the natural gas to easily transportable less volatile value added products such as aromatic hydrocarbons, a far reaching economic impact can be achieved which will also lead to exploration of more gas-rich field increasing the natural gas reserves.
Aromatic hydrocarbons are an important commodity in the petroleum and petrochemical industries. The most commercially important aromatics are benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes. Aromatics are currently produced by catalytic reforming of various petroleum feed stocks and catalytic cracking of naphthas. Aromatics can also be produced by catalytic conversion of alcohols (particularly methanol), olefins or lower alkanes (particularly propane, butanes or LPG). The catalyst used in these processes (methanol-to-gasoline Mobil's MTG process, olefins-to-gasoline-and-distillate or MOGD or M2 forming, both developed by Mobil Oil, and LPG-to-aromatics conversion process or Cyclar Process developed by UOP) belong to the pentasil zeolite family, particularly that having ZSM-5 structure.